


Underbelly

by sheafrotherdon



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Episode Tag, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-08
Updated: 2011-01-08
Packaged: 2017-10-14 14:09:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/150019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheafrotherdon/pseuds/sheafrotherdon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve realizes all the things Danny knows.  Tag to 1x13</p>
            </blockquote>





	Underbelly

This Steve knows – the world is complex, a morass of conflict, shifting allegiances, and feverish hope. There are shadows and slipstreams between reason and delusion, imagined necessity and desperate need. Borders mean little; religion is no guide – there are people doing good for all the wrong reasons, and people doing ill out of joy and fright. Against the swirl of the world's fucked-up business he pits small acts: assess all risk; protect what's innocent; give your all; defend your own.

But Danny doesn't have his training, doesn't know the underbelly of a dozen countries and the spaces between. Danny lives in a civilian world and he loves it, passionately, with a sloppy kindness that twists at Steve's gut. There's good and bad in Danny's estimation, and he'll punch you, break your fingers, slam your head against the wall – but he'll slump in the passenger seat of his beat-up Camero, and grieve for people he never knew. More often than not he's the first to see the victim, has gentle hands and soft, steady words for the shocked, the injured, the terrified, the young. Their hurt fuels his anger, makes him hunt down every bastard who dares mess up his turf, but he keeps on caring, and he hugs his daughter, and Steve has no idea how anyone does that, how you take that risk and keep getting hurt.

Then Mary gets taken, and Steve's heart's in his throat, and Danny never says _you're a fucking liability_ , or _pull yourself together, understand: this is your job._ This messed up place is where Danny always lives, and he knows how you survive it, how you channel the fear, and when Steve can bring himself to meet Danny's eyes he knows that Danny gets it, that his heart's in this too. _Jesus_ , he hates this, this messy, stupid, complicated _thing_ , but Danny's at his back, and Danny's _always_ like this, and Danny's decent and focused, and maybe, okay, he can let Danny lead.

~*~

Danny finds him when it's over, when Koji's dead and Mary's gone, and he's still – so much – a walking catastrophe, a maelstrom of caring, even then. And it's somehow that, his too-big heart and his casual kindness, that has Steve reaching clumsily to wrap a hand around Danny's wrist, has him pulling Danny in to kiss him desperately, and Danny meets him where he is, fists his hands in Steve's grey shirt.


End file.
